COLUMN: New Ideas? Oh no! Hurry. let’s hide them
” … O’er the land of the free (so long as you write and say exactly what everyone else wants you to) and the home of the brave (so long as I can hide behind this funeral pyre of ingenuity)!”
Last week was the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, which encouraged people to read banned books.
Banned books? Are you kidding? Do people still do that? Did Hitler put you up to this? You know what can happen when you listen to him.
God forbid anyone in this nation – built upon freedoms suppressed in Europe centuries ago – should use their hard-won freedom to express new and sometimes ingenious thoughts. Wait, we don’t even have to go that far. God forbid anyone in this world should introduce children to new ideas their parents or teachers may not understand or agree with.
I don’t get some of you Americans. You want the right to bear arms but you don’t want your children or neighbors reading scary stories? How does that work? How is the thought of sex or wizards more harmful than guns?
One of the most challenged books in the country last year (challenged meaning people requested the material be removed from the shelves) was the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Now, I’ve never read the books, but it seems to me that anything that can create the kind of voracious reading by children like this series has done must be a good thing. So it’s got some witchcraft and mysticism in it. So do lots of books. The Bible has angels, immaculate conception, parting of the Red Sea, a talking donkey and a burning bush. Why isn’t that deemed unreasonable for children to read?
I know. We should all just move to Russia. The Soviet Union from 1926 to 1956 banned the Bible and the Qur’an from its libraries. People weren’t even allowed to import the book. That way, I’m sure banning Harry Potter won’t be any big deal.
What is it that people are so afraid of? I can understand how some books are inappropriate for children of certain ages. I don’t suppose an 8-year-old needs to be reading Madonna’s “Sex” or Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but I don’t think those books should be removed from the shelves, either. Incidentally, those two books are on the list of the Top 100 Challenged Books from 1990 to 1999. See the list at www.ala.org.
Perhaps parents are, once again, relying on other people to watch out for their children and teach them the values necessary for success and happiness in life. Maybe if parents monitor what their children read and don’t allow them access to certain materials, I would still be able to read the books they want to ban.
I would like to be able to go to my local library and pick up a book I want to read regardless of what my neighbours think of it. That’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Free will. My freedom to write (or read, by extension) what I want, as long as it doesn’t threaten national security, is guaranteed by the First Amendment. And why should anyone else care?
If you don’t want your children to read a particular book, don’t let them. Until they’re 18, that’s still your right and responsibility, whether they realize it or not.
If you don’t want to read a particular book, then don’t. Nobody’s forcing the book down your throat simply because it’s on a shelf.
Without new thoughts and ideas expressed and, more importantly, preserved through literature, everyone in the world would think exactly the same way and life would be the absolute most boring prospect. No thank you. I don’t want people to dress the same way, why would we want to think the same way? It’s not human nature to do so.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read a challenged book. Free people read freely. Isn’t that great? God bless America!
Heather Fredrickson is a senior majoring in journalism. E-mail comments to her at slr4h@cc.usu.edu.